


roundabout

by treescape



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn, M/M, Qui-Gon Jinn Lives, Sith Obi-Wan Kenobi, Slow Burn, eventual E rating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25093087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treescape/pseuds/treescape
Summary: After saving Qui-Gon’s life on Naboo, Obi-Wan disappears. He leaves pain and uncertainty in his wake, but Qui-Gon is determined to find him—and Obi-Wan wants to be found.Or: Somehow Sith!Obi-Wan becomes Qui-Gon’s guardian angel of sorts.
Relationships: Qui-Gon Jinn/Obi-Wan Kenobi
Comments: 42
Kudos: 138





	1. Prologue: Emptiness

**Author's Note:**

> [Orientalld](https://orientalld.tumblr.com/) and [Jswander](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JSwander/pseuds/JSwander) were discussing Sith!Obi-Wan on discord, and they were both lovely enough to let me write something based off of it. The basic premise, to quote Orientalld, is: “Obi delivered injured Qui after Naboo and gone missing! And ever since Qui-Gon is trying to find him.”

When Qui-Gon awoke, there was nothing left of Obi-Wan but memories and rumours.

Except that was a lie. There was also emptiness.

The lights were too bright; they crawled their way into his skull and took root. The healers dimmed them to something bearable, but even then, with his eyes closed, they blistered. They seemed to pulse in time with the fire in his gut.

Something told him there should have been more pain than there was, but he couldn’t seem to catch hold of the thought. It hovered somewhere just out of reach, as if his hands were too big or too small or maybe not really hands at all.

All he could feel was the fire, and a void where something precious used to live.

The healers asked him what happened, and he tried to find words. Naboo lay in fragments in his mind, but there was dark and light, red and death, agony and cauterized flesh. There was Obi-Wan’s fear rolling through their bond as his arms cradled Qui-Gon’s body, the rough weave of his robes as they caught against Qui-Gon’s cheek. There was a flash of something bright and dangerous, something golden but dull.

Qui-Gon had touched Obi-Wan’s face, but it was so far away. His hand had fallen back down to the shell of his own chest, and he’d said things he could no longer recall.

There was no audible reaction to his words. For a moment, Qui-Gon thought that the healers had gone, too, or that perhaps they had been a figment of his imagination. But when he pried his eyes open to investigate, it was to see faces hovering uncertainly above.

All they could tell him was that he wasn’t dead, and that Obi-Wan wasn't there.

But then, he’d already known that second part.

\---

That afternoon, the healers allowed two visitors. Qui-Gon only registered the span of time because of the chronometer on the wall across from him; it might have been three minutes or three days, so far as he could tell otherwise.

Yoda entered haltingly, his gimer stick echoing on the floor, but his slowness wasn’t age. His eyes carefully surveyed Qui-Gon’s face as he drew near, as if weighing him.

Qui-Gon didn’t know why or how he was being measured, this time, but it was so familiar that it felt somehow grounding. Qui-Gon held to it like a lifeline.

“Well enough you look,” Yoda eventually said, coming to a stop beside Qui-Gon’s bed, but Qui-Gon didn’t feel well enough. His body was whole, his wounds somehow partially healed before he’d ever reached Coruscant, but the emptiness twisted nauseously within.

No one seemed to know how or why his bond to Obi-Wan, built so carefully over years of training, had disappeared. All Qui-Gon knew was that he’d faced his death whole and had woken up something else entirely.

Hollow. Broken.

Abandoned.

The healers said the shock of it would lessen, with time, but he found that hard to believe.

“We are all grateful for it.” Mace’s voice, careful and grave, pulled him momentarily back to the room. Qui-Gon could read the sincerity in his words, but they seemed to part around him like a river on stone.

Mace unfolded his hands from his robes to reveal a lightsaber. It was Qui-Gon’s; every fibre of it called to him. Mace carefully set it on the small table next to Qui-Gon’s bed, where it would lie within easy reach.

“This was given into our keeping,” Mace told him, and Qui-Gon didn’t need to ask by whom.

The last time he had seen that lightsaber, it had been alight in Obi-Wan’s hands, a green fire in the darkness.

“Tell me everything.” Qui-Gon’s voice sounded peculiar to his own ears. He felt as if he hadn’t used it in months, though he knew that wasn’t true. He had spoken to the healers that morning, each word drawn sharply from his throat.

Yoda and Mace exchanged a glance, a frown on Yoda’s lips and a furrow to Mace’s brow, but Qui-Gon sensed no reluctance. There was apprehension, and uncertainty, but they didn’t appear to be directed at him.

It was disconcerting, to see them so unsure. Even when Qui-Gon disagreed with the Council’s actions, he could rarely call them _uncertain_.

“We had no real notice you were coming,” Mace finally said, and he pulled up a chair to sit. Yoda followed suit. Qui-Gon wondered if they did so to spare him the inconvenience of looking up, or if they intended to be there a while. “The Queen sent a message that you’d disappeared—you and Kenobi.”

There was a glaring omission there, and Qui-Gon fumbled to grasp it. “Where is Anakin?” He should have asked sooner, should have _wondered_ sooner. For all the void within, there seemed to be no space to hold fast to any one thought.

“Sent for him we have,” Yoda said decisively with a nod of his head, and the firmness in his voice was a counterpoint to the uneasiness in the room. “In the creche the boy will stay, for now.”

It was Mace who expanded. “Queen Amidala has informed us that the boy had a great hand in the victory at Naboo. The Council has deemed that he should be trained, at least for a time. Whether he stays or not will be determined as it is for all initiates.”

The relief felt distant, as if it welled up from under a foot of ice, but it was there.

“Obi-Wan.” Qui-Gon hadn’t known it could hurt so much to say a single name.

Mace leaned forward, his elbows braced on his knees, but he took that name as the desperate prompt that it was. “The ship appeared out of nowhere. Naboo make, according to the droids in the hangar bay, and Amidala confirms that a ship did go missing.” He shook his head, lips pressed into a thin line, but he continued after a moment. “Kenobi delivered you here, handed your lightsaber to me, and by the time the Council had convened to hear his report, he—and the ship—were gone.”

“How long?”

“Two days ago it was. Nothing have we found, yet.”

A pause, and that maelstrom of _nothing_ threatened to swallow him whole until Mace let his gaze fasten on Qui-Gon’s lightsaber and spoke again. “He left one other thing.”

“Tell me.”

“A threat.”

“A threat,” Yoda agreed, but his voice was speculative, “or a wish.”

Mace lifted his eyes to Qui-Gon’s own. “‘Don’t let him die.’”

\---

When Qui-Gon was allowed to return to his chambers some few days later, he found silence. He opened the windows to drown it out, but closed them again soon enough. Sound was worse than its absence; it made him think he heard footsteps he was straining to hear.

In the weeks after, he opened the door to Obi-Wan’s room only once. His padawan’s scant belongings were gone—Obi-Wan’s extra tunics and robes, his few books, the small box of keepsakes and gifts he had gathered over the years. The room, with its bed and its desk and its small chest of drawers, looked sterile and unused, as if Obi-Wan had never existed.

He closed the door and left the room to its desolation. He thought it would be a long time before it was used again, if ever, unless Obi-Wan were to suddenly materialize at the Temple.

Something whispered that he wouldn’t, almost tangible in the quiet. Qui-Gon wanted to cradle the thought in his hands and then crush it into oblivion.

The Council allowed him to do as he wished, for now, so long as he focused on mending. Not knowing precisely what had been done to hold him to life on Naboo, the healers had opted to let him finish recovery more naturally, without bacta treatments. His once ravaged stomach was tender to touch, sore at the slightest movement, but somehow, miraculously, scarred with the process of healing.

He read, sometimes, when he had the focus for it. He entertained visitors when they called, and reported to the Halls of Healing as scheduled. He slept, when he could, though the pain and the solitude made it difficult.

He made tea every morning and brewed enough for two, but it wasn’t habit or forgetfulness. He never poured the second cup; when it went cold in the pot, he carefully emptied and cleaned the heavy ceramic and set it aside, empty.

Just like himself.

\---

It was three weeks after his release from the Halls of Healing before he found the note, pressed between the pages of a book of Alderaanian poetry, marking the start of Cylana Tolod's "Regret." Distantly, he registered the first line of the poem, as familiar to him as the lines that creased his own palm. _Had I known the insurmountable expanse of my grief…_

The note was written on heavy paper, and Qui-Gon knew, as he knew that suns eventually died and new worlds were born, that it hadn’t been there when he’d left for Naboo.

 _I loved you_ was all it said, centred on the page in Obi-Wan’s meticulous writing. The letters looked small and alone. They were vast and overwhelming.

But then he thought to turn the paper over, hands moving unconsciously as if they refused to believe there was nothing more. Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he could almost hear the gears of life begin to turn again.

There, tucked away at the bottom, were words that would shape the rest of his life.

 _I still do_.


	2. Misdirection

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But Qui-Gon had his dreams and his rumours and a note pressed between the leaves of an old, beloved book. He had a fracture in his soul that would not let him be.
> 
> So he would continue to search, to call in favours, to throw out lines and to reel in whispers and tales and rumours, until there was nothing left to find.
> 
> And then he would continue still.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million thanks to [tessiete](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tessiete/profile), for helping me figure out what the heck is going on in this story, and to [Pomiar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pomiar/profile) for reading this chapter for me!

The message came through just before dawn. Qui-Gon turned his head against the pillow, fabric catching on his beard, and stared at the comlink next to the bed until the need to know felt tight in his chest.

Light flared from the hologram when he finally reached out to activate it, just bright enough to make him squint. Marshal-General Raena’s face materialized in front of him, annoyance in the creases at her eyes, and Qui-Gon knew what she would say before the monochrome words formed on her lips.

“The ship was lost in hyperspace traffic. No telling where it was headed––we’re getting nothing from the beacon. He probably flung it into the nearest sun.” A pause, and then, quietly, with a sympathy he’d heard all too often in the past three years, “I’m sorry, Master Jinn.”

Qui-Gon flicked the comlink off and returned his gaze to the ceiling. Static floated across his vision until the remnants of the hologram’s light had faded, and he played Raena’s words again in his mind.

It seemed he would have to find a new lead after all, but that was why he had come. The beacon had been a shot in the dark from the beginning, barely even a ghost of a chance.

Qui-Gon’s world seemed to turn on those, these days.

Still, it would be a lie to say he hadn’t felt a fragile sliver of hope when the Thrallian government had contacted him two days past. To be given not only definitive proof of Obi-Wan’s presence, however brief it might have been, but also the news that the portmaster had placed a tracking beacon on his ship––it had been like a feast after famine, a flood after drought. The holorecording sent by the Thrallians had shown Obi-Wan’s face for only a second before his cloaked figure turned away, but it had been enough to bring Qui-Gon halfway across the galaxy without a second’s thought.

He’d done as much for less on more than one occasion.

Outside the miniscule window of his hotel room, Coria was finally starting to come awake. Major cities were never truly quiet, no matter the planet or the time of night, but Qui-Gon could hear the quickening rhythm so often generated by the approach of sunrise. Qui-Gon pushed himself into a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed, waving the light on with one hand. He’d been awake in the darkness for hours, though there was nothing new about that; sleep was elusive, more often than not. When it came, it was broken by dreams that made him recoil his way back to wakefulness.

The nightmares he could handle. It was the other dreams, the ones that plagued him more often, that made him mistrust his own unconscious mind. They were memories more than anything, and the temptation to linger too long, to drown himself in their depths, was too great a danger.

The room he had rented on landing the night before was clean but small. Rising fully from the bed, it took him only three quick paces to reach the desk against the other wall, where his datapad lay. There was a distinct chill in the air, but Qui-Gon ignored the robes draped across the back of the chair in favour of making a careful notation under the entry for _7948.800.3. Sighting on Thralla._ There were almost a dozen entries, now, reaching all the way back to the very first, _7945.421.1. Possible sighting on Alor Kai._ Sometimes the rumours placed Obi-Wan at a spaceport, sometimes at an official’s office or residence, even once at a market, but always he arrived and departed alone.

And behind him, if Qui-Gon’s sources could be believed, he left a brief taste of despair on the wind. Sometimes, Qui-Gon forced himself to think about what that might signify, if it were true––of what an Obi-Wan alone and unmoored, with despair in his heart, might _mean_.

Many on the Council thought Qui-Gon was chasing phantoms, and Qui-Gon could almost agree with them. The rumours came slowly, sometimes, distorted by time and space. No matter how long Qui-Gon spent in the archives or searching out further clues, Obi-Wan was never to be found. There were some, Qui-Gon knew, who were content to leave it that way, or at the very least had resigned themselves to it; the Jedi were spread thin enough as it was, and if Obi-Wan had wanted to be found, he never would have left.

But Qui-Gon had his dreams and his rumours and a note pressed between the leaves of an old, beloved book. He had a fracture in his soul that would not let him be.

So he would continue to search, to call in favours, to throw out lines and to reel in whispers and tales and rumours, until there was nothing left to find.

And then he would continue still.

\---

Thralla was, objectively, a beautiful world. The most populous cities of the inner-Rim planet, including the capital city of Coria, had prospered on a vast sea of plains fed by winding rivers. Ringed by mountains and lakes to the north and the east, Qui-Gon could not deny its natural charm.

It looked very much like Naboo, and Qui-Gon hated it. He wanted only to learn what he had come to learn and to leave as soon as possible.

He wanted to turn his back on this place and to restore what little equilibrium was left to him.

The hotel Qui-Gon had chosen was only a few narrow streets away from the building Raena had directed him to. He could have stayed at the palace, had he wished; in addition to his political status as a Jedi, he had known the King and the Marshal-General of Thralla since a mission nearly ten years ago. But Qui-Gon had neither the desire nor the time for politics and statecraft. Obi-Wan could be anywhere, by now, and the only clue Qui-Gon had was that he had been caught on camera entering the office of a minor official. It chafed enough that he had been required to wait out the night.

But he had to move carefully, now. Qui-Gon hadn’t been able to risk causing a scene by demanding a meeting well past midnight.

He couldn’t risk scaring Obi-Wan off from ever returning to this planet.

It wasn’t long before Qui-Gon was comfortably seated in a cramped office, the room’s overdone opulence making it seem even smaller than it truly was. Qui-Gon made idle conversation for a short time with the Junior Secretary of Mechanical Industry, dropping hints about wanting to do business on Thralla.

The conversation was just lengthy enough for Qui-Gon to form an opinion on Rannek Kelen, and to become thoroughly confused as to what Obi-Wan could possibly have wanted from him. The man seemed to have little power outside of approving or denying mechanical licensing rights, and didn’t appear to be any more or less corrupt than most such officials were.

Finally, with a light push of the Force to persuade truthfulness, and a rush of blood in his ears, Qui-Gon came to the question he was here to ask.

“Tell me what you know of the man who was here two and a half days ago, at 0018:05 standard hours.”

For a moment, the world seemed to slow around him, and then, like the deadly snap of ice, Kelen’s green eyes glazed over. His face, framed by brown curls of hair, was as smooth as a mask.

When Kelen spoke, his lips twisting into a blank smile, Qui-Gon wasn't sure if his heart would stop or pound out of his chest.

“You’re too late, Master.”

Kelen’s voice was not Obi-Wan’s. It did not resemble it at all––it was too low, the accents too round in places and too sharp in others. But his tone was so familiar that it sent shivers down Qui-Gon’s spine, a sudden tremor that felt like it might have shattered his very frame if he allowed it to take hold.

When the glaze passed and the mask softened, leaving Kelen blinking in confusion, Qui-Gon could get nothing more from him or from anyone else he questioned in the coming days.

That tone, so even but for the familiar sardonic tilt of the words, haunted him the entire way back to Coruscant.

\---

Spaceports so often looked the same, but Qui-Gon recognized this one. It didn’t stand out in any particular way unless one counted the fact that he and Obi-Wan had visited it only months before that fateful mission to Naboo.

“Do you think we’re too late, Master?”

It was a dream, but awareness did not make it easier––not when his dreams drew so deeply and exactly on the well of his memories.

“I think we will find that we’re perfectly on time.” Qui-Gon felt the vibration of the words in his throat, but they seemed to come from far away.

The concern on Obi-Wan’s face eased slightly, but he still tugged absentmindedly at the long braid that hung over one shoulder. He stood, face turned to the blue of the sky that stretched above them. “As you say, Master.”

Time passed in the way of dreams, both sluggish and agile at once. A moment later, or maybe a year later, a ship appeared on the horizon. Qui-Gon knew, both from memories and the peculiarity of dreams, that it was the official they had been sent to apprehend.

“Looks like you were right,” Obi-Wan said, turning his head towards Qui-Gon with a grin. “This time.”

\---

Qui-Gon awoke in darkness and breathed, long and quiet, until his heartbeat slowed and the dawn finally rose.

He didn’t try to sleep again that night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! :)
> 
> I'm [treescape](https://treescape.tumblr.com/) on tumblr.


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